I am not an expert by any means, but I too have watched the various offerings from the banks and we started to try to fine tune how we were holding our cash assets. For CDs, we recently moved on from our money market accounts to take advantage of the higher rates on CDs. We have set up a ladder approach by creating a series of 3, 6 and 12 month CDs to allow for some flexibility. If rates get better, we can roll them over to new rate, whereas if it drops, the funds can be allocated elsewhere.
As someone mentioned before, I bonds also seem like a great investment although you can only allocate 10K per year, But you can create various accounts for the wife and kids ( 10K each). Its a good way to put some cash away for the kids.